1: History | Hieroglyphics were used by Ancient Egyptians for almost 3000 years. Only royalty, scribes, priests and government officials could use hieroglyphics. Hieroglyphs were symbols that represent objects and ideas. For example: boats, tools or animals and time, joy and sorrow. Since hieroglyphs were time consuming to write, Egyptians developed a script called hieratics. Hieratics were simplified versions of hieroglyphics. By the 7th century BC, Egyptians had simplified hieroglyphics even more by creating demotics. When the 1st century AD came around, Hieroglyphics were no longer used or read.

2: Tools | Ancient Egyptians started by carving hieroglyphs into stone or clay by using carving tools. As time passed, Egyptians used reed pens and wrote on papyrus. Papyrus was the world's first paper, which is actually a plant that grows in water or marshes.

3: Symbols | The symbols the Ancient Egyptians used stood for certain sounds. Often times, vowels were left out of the words too. They used determinatives, which told which category the word belonged in such as animal words.

4: Cartouche | A cartouche is an oblong shaped loop, which contained names. The names were written from top to bottom rather than left to right. You received a cartouche as a child with your name on it. | Want to make your own cartouche? Go here! http://www.virtual-egypt.com/newhtml/glyph/glyph.html

5: Rosetta Stone | Th Rosetta stone was a very important discovery by French soldiers around 1800. The stone had three different languages on it, hieroglyphics, demotic script and ancient Greek. Since the stone had ancient Greek written on it, scholars were able to use the information and decode the hieroglyphics and the demotics.